Harry Potter and the Chamber of Stupidity
by Rhianwen
Summary: [Chapter 5 uploaded!] A parody of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." The creature from the chamber has a very different effect on the Muggle-borns... Warning: Rhianwen has a severe and incurable RonHermione bias. Exercise extreme caution.
1. Stupidity in a Bottle

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Stupidity  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: Now, I am very aware that this idea has been done. Most likely to death. And I'd like to apologize if this title has been used before, too. However, I would really appreciate it if you would give this a chance nonetheless. I think I have managed to give it some originality, and for me, humor is an art form, so you will see none of the grammatically disastrous, profanity-dotted...stuff that humor can, at times, degenerate into.  
  
  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own them, and they don't like me, folks. As far as I know, they're currently teaming up with J.K. Rowling, who DOES own them, to end my life. ^_^  
  
  
  
Summary: A parody of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The creature from the Chamber of Secrets has a very different effect on the Muggle- borns...  
  
  
  
  
  
It was a dark and stormy summer's night. Albus Dumbledore was sitting in his rocking chair, eating celery. Because, after all, everyone eats celery, unless they want to die a most terrible death. As we all know, celery is good for you.  
  
"Remember, children," Dumbledore began abruptly, gazing sternly into an imaginary camera, "eat your celery, unless you want to die a most terrible death."  
  
"Er, Albus," Professor McGonagall began hesitantly, sauntering into the room with a large teapot and pouring an amount of the steaming liquid into the old man's cup, "what is your obsession with dying a terrible death?"  
  
"Do not ask me, Minerva," he replied. "Unless you want to die a most terrible death."  
  
"I...see. Um, one thing, Albus."  
  
"Yes, my love?" he asked, beaming.  
  
"Er...what?"  
  
"Oh, so sorry about that. I forgot where I was for a moment."  
  
"Er...right. I simply wanted to ask why we are here. Don't we always start these books with a quick vignette of young Mr. Potter's life with the evil, mundane, and pitifully stupid Muggles that he lives with in order to emphasize the contrast between our lives and theirs when Harry is whisked suddenly off to a world of magic and adventure?"  
  
"Quite right, Minerva. This is, indeed, all irrelevant. Still, children, do not forget my words."  
  
"Yes, children," Professor McGonagall agreed, nodding at the same invisible camera that Dumbledore had earlier addressed. "Celery is very good for you. It provides many nutrients that the young growing body simply needs to have."  
  
"So be cool," the two said together, "and eat your celery!"  
  
  
  
  
  
While Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall were busily endorsing a healthy, balanced diet, eleven-but-nearly-twelve year old Harry Potter, a slender fellow with an unruly shock of black hair, brilliant green eyes, a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, and a perpetually pitiful and waif- like expression, surveyed with disgust and slight fear (behind the pitiful waif-like sadness, of course) the new (to him, at any rate) hand-me-down garments draped out across his bed in the smallest bedroom at Privet Drive.  
  
"I don't even want to know what kind of phase Dudley was going through when he wore this," he muttered to himself as his gaze lit on the most prominent of the items, also the one that Aunt Petunia Dursley had commanded he put on immediately.  
  
"Enough dawdling, boy! Get your new clothes on and get down here!"  
  
Harry gave a heavy sigh as he quickly dressed and made his way downstairs.  
  
  
  
"Wonderful. It fits. That will do you to wear for housework. After all," Petunia Dursley continued, glaring ferociously at Harry, "you don't want to get your GOOD things dirty. Dudley is still rather attached to the hand-me- downs that he has been kind enough to loan you, and I don't trust you to keep them clean."  
  
"Aunt Petunia," Harry began miserably, tugging the hem of the raggedy dress of grey drugget down to cover his knees, "I know you don't like me much, but don't you think that this is going a bit far?"  
  
"Of course not!" the gaunt woman snarled, shoving a mop at him. "Now, I want these floors gleaming within the hour!"  
  
"But it's late! I'm tired!"  
  
"Shut up and mop, boy! That's what we pay you for!"  
  
"Actually, you don't pay me," Harry reminded her mildly.  
  
"Quiet!"  
  
"Fine, fine," the dark-haired youth sighed as she stalked into the living room to join her husband and son for an evening of television.  
  
Once she had gone, Harry leaned on his mop and gazed wistfully out the window, thinking longingly of the Hogwarts castle in all its grandeur.  
  
"There is a castle on a cloud," he sang in a beautiful, clear, girlish soprano.  
  
"I like to go there in my sleep,  
  
"Aren't any floors for me to - OW!"  
  
This last exclamation came about as a large, heavy boot soared through the doorway adjoining the kitchen and living room, and struck Harry squarely on the head.  
  
"Shut up!" Vernon Dursley bellowed. "What've I told you about singing, boy?!"  
  
"Not to do it under any circumstances," Harry recited boredly, dipping the mop into the water pail and scrubbing a patch of the kitchen tile.  
  
  
  
Later that night, Harry lay on his bed, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling, his mind filled with anger and hurt. Why on earth had neither of his friends written to him? He briefly considered the possibility that both Ron and Hermione had decided the second he was out of their sight that they didn't like him anymore, and quickly dismissed it.  
  
Perhaps they were both busy? But what, he wondered in puzzlement, could Ron and Hermione be doing that was so much fun that they had both completely forgotten to write to him?  
  
"Hrm...where's that music coming from?" he mused. Almost on cue, the cheesy 70's porno music died down. Likely, Uncle Vernon was watching one of his videos, and Aunt Petunia had just shouted at him to turn down the volume. "Weird. Oh, well. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Wallowing in self-pity."  
  
Poor, poor him. Whatever would he do for the remainder of the summer?  
  
"There is a castle on a cloud," he sang once again in the same beautiful, ringing, girlish soprano.  
  
"I like to go there in my sleep,  
  
Aren't any floors for me to sweep,  
  
Not in my castle on a - OW!" he yelped in conclusion as once again, he was struck with a heavy boot, this time on the side of the head.  
  
"NO SINGING!" Vernon Dursley bellowed from the doorway of the small room.  
  
"Fine, fine," Harry muttered, turning over to gaze moodily at the wall.  
  
With a nod of satisfaction, Vernon slammed the door shut. Now, perhaps, he could enjoy his video in peace.  
  
"This is going to be a long summer," Harry decided mournfully.  
  
  
  
  
  
The next evening, this decision was more firmly reinforced than ever. Harry stood in the Dursleys' kitchen, avoiding the gazes of Vernon and Petunia Durlsey, and their porky twelve-year old son, Dudley, for fear that he might burst most unceremoniously into laughter if he caught any of their eyes, filled with such over-emphasized deviousness that it was ridiculous.  
  
"Alright, everyone, let's get our game-plan straight," Vernon barked. "Petunia, when the Masons get here, you will be?"  
  
"In the lounge, in a sexy negligee, waiting to wow Mr. Mason into submission," she replied immediately.  
  
"Exactly, my love - wait a minute! That wasn't in the game plan!"  
  
"Oh, right, right. Waiting in the lounge to welcome them to our home," she corrected herself sheepishly. "Goodness, what was I thinking of?"  
  
"Er, right, dear. Dudley? You will be?"  
  
"Waiting by the door to take their coats and hang them up, but not before snagging both their bulging wallets," the boy answered promptly, his cheeks jiggling with mirth.  
  
"Exactly! That's Dad's little highway robber!" Vernon beamed with pride, ruffling his son's hair. Then he turned to Harry and fixed him with a loathing expression. "And you?"  
  
"I'll be up in my room, making no sound, and pretending I'm not there," Harry quoted tiredly.  
  
"And don't forget it!" Vernon growled menacingly.  
  
"And no singing!" Aunt Petunia added sharply.  
  
"And no singing," Harry agreed, barely repressing the urge to roll his eyes. "Er, Aunt Petunia, as long as I'm up there, might I change out of this dress?"  
  
"Absolutely not!" she barked.  
  
"Fine," Harry sighed, starting for his room.  
  
Now, if this had been the story of any other young boy, he would have spent the evening lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, hating the world, or talking to his pet owl, Hedwig (although it is doubtful that most young boys would have an owl for a pet), or possibly trying to pick the lock on his closet in order to retrieve some clothes that were not women's.  
  
However, this is not the story of any other boy. This is the story of Harry Potter, who wandered into his bedroom to behold a smallish creature, gaunt of limb, clad in a pillowcase, with a long nose and enormous eyes, seated on his bed.  
  
"Er..." Harry began quite brilliantly. "Who are you?"  
  
"I am Dobby, sir. Dobby the house-elf."  
  
"Er..." Harry repeated, just as brilliantly. "What?"  
  
"Dobby the house-elf, sir! Surely Harry Potter is not hard of hearing?! Oh, how terrible! Dobby is too late, and Harry Potter's hearing has been taken away by some hideous fiend!"  
  
With this, Dobby rocketed across the room and proceeded to slam his head repeatedly into the wall, warbling out as he did so, simply for the sake of explaining the concept of a house-elf to the readers, the tale of his tragic past and his enslavement.  
  
"Hey, hey, hey, keep it down, will you!" Harry pleaded. "My hearing's fine! Unfortunately, so's my uncle's and he'll kill me if you don't hold down the noise!"  
  
"Dobby did not mean to get Harry Potter in trouble," Dobby assured him woozily. "By the way, does Harry Potter have any Advil(tm)?"  
  
"Er, no. I'm not allowed to have painkillers. Uncle Vernon thinks that pain is enriching for someone like me."  
  
"Harry Potter's Uncle Vernon sounds like a knob," Dobby said decidedly. "But all the same, Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"  
  
"Er..." Harry began in a repeat of his brilliant performance earlier. "Any reason why?"  
  
"Terrible things will happen there, sir! Terrible things!"  
  
"More terrible than an aunt who makes me wear dresses?" Harry inquired, raising an eyebrow behind his round glasses.  
  
"Much more terrible!"  
  
"I don't believe you. I don't think such a thing exists. But all that aside, Dobby, I've GOT to go back! Hogwarts is my home! All my friends are there!"  
  
At once, Dobby's expression became fierce, and he leapt up and seized Harry by the collar.  
  
"Friends?" he echoed, his voice becoming low and gravelly, something like that of the stereotypical football coach. "Friends?! Whaddaya need them for?! Yer better off without them, boy! They'll only slow you down on your way to the top! What kind of friends let a whole summer go by, including a birthday, without a single letter?!"  
  
"Hold on," Harry said with a frown once he regained his bearings and repressed the elf-breath-induced urge to vomit. "How did you know that my friends haven't been writing to me?"  
  
"Ooh, shouldn't 'a said that," Dobby observed sheepishly.  
  
Harry's eyes grew wide.  
  
"Hagrid? Is it you in house-elf form?!"  
  
"Dobby suspects that Harry Potter's long solitary confinement must have turned his brain..." Dobby noted sadly. Then he shook himself. "All the same, Harry Potter must promise that he will not return to Hogwarts."  
  
"Uh...no."  
  
"Then Dobby has no choice," that same Dobby sighed sadly before bolting from the room and down the stairs.  
  
Now, Harry was a bright lad. After all, no one likes a stupid hero, and it is imperative to Harry's status as a barely disguised Mary Sue (or Gary Stu, as it were) that he be at least a little bit intelligent. As such, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would not hold his releasing a crazed house-elf on their dinner party in very high esteem, and that they were almost certain not to regard it as 'staying in his room, making no sound, and pretending that he wasn't there,' despite how much he may have wished that his not being there were the case.  
  
This wish filled him with an even greater intensity at the sight before him in the living room.  
  
Upon catching sight of Dudley, Dobby muttered a quick spell and nodded in satisfaction as the chubby boy began to lift into the air.  
  
"Oh, lord, no," Harry groaned in dismay as Dudley, completely unaware that he was floating, so engrossed was he in shoveling cookies into his capacious maw, drifted from his chair and over to the couch, where he hung for a moment above the head of the ever-fashionable and bird-like (in appetite, according to her; in wit, according to everyone else) Mrs. Mason.  
  
"Oh, this could definitely be very bad," Harry murmured to himself as Dudley began to rapidly lose altitude. "Very bad."  
  
  
  
Ten minutes, later, the Dursleys watched in horror as Mrs. Mason was wheeled out on a stretcher and, judging by the devastated and terrified expression on Mr. Mason's face, all hope of Vernon's longed-for business deal evaporated before their greedy, beady eyes.  
  
Once they had gone, and the blaring of the ambulance siren faded into the distance, Vernon Dursley fixed Harry with such an expression of loathing that Harry wondered that he had failed to turn to stone on the spot.  
  
"What did you do?" the great beach ball of a man hissed.  
  
"I didn't do a thing," Harry replied, wiping a drop of spittle off of his face and taking comfort in the fact that this was completely true, whether or not he had conveniently left out the account of a house-elf's involvement.  
  
"I don't believe a word of it!"  
  
"Daddy, he threw me at that bony broad!" Dudley whined.  
  
"I didn't!" Harry insisted.  
  
"Well, then who did?" Dudley demanded, crossing his arms. "A little creature with huge eyes, wearing a potato sack?"  
  
"Actually..." Harry began, but this was as far as he got, as Aunt Petunia came charging into the room, a letter clutched in her immaculately manicured hand.  
  
"Look at this, Vernon! Little brat's been keeping something from us!"  
  
Uncle Vernon took the letter, unfolded it, and read it.  
  
Harry's heart sank as he recognized the Hogwart's crest thingy on the back.  
  
Vernon laughed an evil laugh, yet it must not be forgotten that he is far too stupid to be any real threat.  
  
"Yes, the boy has been keeping something from us. It seems that he is not to be using his little party tricks during the summers, and if they hear of another offense, he'll be expelled!" He glared down at Harry. "You know what this means, don't you?"  
  
"That I get to change out of this dress before it does lasting emotional damage?" Harry suggested hopefully.  
  
Vernon bellowed out another evil laugh.  
  
"Absolutely not! It means that you are never going back to that school!"  
  
  
  
"Oh, yeah?" Ron Weasley said, glaring through his binoculars at the grossly overweight man currently dragging his best friend up the staircase. "That's what you think, eh? Well, I think different!"  
  
"So do we," George Weasley added from the driver's side of the Weasley family Ford Anglia currently hovering just outside the front window of 4 Privet Drive. "Dun worry, Ron. We'll get him out of there in a shot."  
  
"We'll just have to wait until tonight," George's twin brother, Fred Weasley added, nodding sagely. "After all, we wouldn't want anyone to hear the ruckus and notice us, would we?"  
  
George and Ron shook their heads emphatically. Fred nodded in satisfaction.  
  
"That's what I thought. Now, act natural, you two, while I find us a good place to wait until tonight."  
  
And so, the three flaming-haired young men began to whistle innocently as the car floated away from the front window of the Dursley residence, and down the street, followed as it went by the eyes of at least forty astonished Muggles.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
End Notes: I think this has been the most difficult part to parody. It's just that...the Durlseys are already a parody of themselves. There wasn't much I could do with them. The only thing I could do was to make Harry a bit of a twit, too. And some argue that this is no change from the book itself, either.  
  
Also, I hope it won't deter too many people if I include some decidedly Ron/Hermione-ish moments in this. I love the pairing to bits, and I really want to try my hand at writing it. Thus, if you are a very decided Harry/Hermione 'shipper, and loathe the Ron/Hermione idea, and tend to be very vocal about this, I would suggest that you not bother to read the later installments of this, in the interest of sparing both of us a good deal of pain. ^_^ 


	2. Stupidity in a Jar

Chapter 2  
  
"There is a castle on a cloud," Harry sang mournfully as he stared once again up at the ceiling in his little bedroom, trying hard not to notice the bars on his window. "I like to go there in my sleep-"  
  
"NO SINGING!"  
  
"Sorry, Uncle Vernon," he called back in a very bored tone which served only to quite clearly state that he wasn't sorry at all.  
  
He sighed. If he thought things had sucked royal amounts of donkey arse at 4 Privet Drive before, it was nothing compared to how much things seemed to suck now. Verily, he had had no concept of the amount of donkey arse that a situation could suck until this very moment.  
  
After a quick huddle following the arrival of his warning letter from Hogwarts, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had come to a mutual decision to lock him, Harry, in his room until he died, or went insane from the shame of still being stuck in that dress, and they could foist him off onto some asylum somewhere.  
  
And so, here he lay, busying himself with counting the cracks in his ceiling, and internally singing his own rendition of 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' which always inevitably melted back into 'Castle on a Cloud' through ways unknown. By Jove, he did love a good medley!  
  
At some point, he must have drifted off to sleep, because when he glanced at the window next, there was a freckled face, topped in a thatch of red hair, hovering outside his window.  
  
"ARGH! Pippi Longstocking has come for my blood!" he howled.  
  
"Shhh!" the apparition outside the window hissed. "It's just me!"  
  
"Oh, hello, Ron," Harry greeted, grinning sheepishly at his outburst. "I'm a little excitable right now."  
  
"Yeah, solitary confinement'll do that do ya," George put in from the back seat with a sympathetic smile.  
  
Fred glared at him.  
  
"It was your own fault for bringing that weasel home in the first place."  
  
"It was your idea!"  
  
"Yeah, well, you should've learned by now never to listen to me!"  
  
"Fellows!" Ron interjected severely. "We're trying to rescue Harry here!"  
  
"Oh, right," George agreed.  
  
"Sorry 'bout that, Harry," Fred added.  
  
"No problem," Harry assured him. "Er, actually, there is a problem."  
  
"Whazzat?" the three boys chorused together.  
  
"These bars on my window."  
  
"Oh! Them! Don' worry about them, Harry!" George said soothingly. "We'll have 'em off in a second!"  
  
And so, Harry watched in amazement and slight consternation as George, Fred and Ron attached a hook to the bars covering the window of Privet Drive's smallest bedroom, then proceeded to clamber back to their seats. The next instant, the car shot straight out from the side of the house, wrenching the bars from the window with a sickening crack.  
  
"Cool it!" he hissed. "You'll wake the dead!"  
  
"Hehehe! Sorry," the boys chimed together.  
  
But there was no sound from any of the other bedrooms down the hall. This seemed to Harry exceedingly strange. Even as he ran down to the cupboard under the stairs, none of the Dursleys awakened.  
  
'This was altogether too easy,' Harry reflected, quite uneasily, as he shoved his trunk into the car and climbed in after it.  
  
"Hey, what's that you're wearing, Harry?" Ron demanded.  
  
"A...a dress," Harry replied, quivering slightly. Something really felt wrong...Ron wasn't usually so tactless...at least where he, Harry, was concerned.  
  
"A dress?!" Ron repeated incredulously. "What're you doing in a dress?!"  
  
"What's the problem, Ron?" George and Fred chorused together, eerily toneless. "We have dresses."  
  
With a gasp of horror, Harry turned to peer at the two young men, and saw that, indeed, both were garbed in strange blue polka-dotted dresses. This was just the beginning. In addition to the dresses, both were clad in droopy stockings, and their hair, the same bright carrot orange as always, was up in long braids that stuck straight out from the sides of the boys' heads.  
  
"Pippi Longstocking!" Harry yelped in terror. "Ron, your brothers have turned into twin Pippi Longstockings!"  
  
"What's a-matter, Harry? Don't you like it?" Ron inquired in much the same flat, toneless voice that his brothers had used seconds ago.  
  
A sensation of cold crept down his spine as he turned to look at Ron.  
  
Then, as his gaze lit on Ron, in the same dress and stockings, his hair done up in the same braids, he let out a shriek of utter panic, wrenching frantically at the car door, trying with everything in him to escape to freedom.  
  
"Harry, what do you think you're doing?!" Hermione's voive demanded severely from the back of his mind. "You'll get yourself hurt or killed if you try that!"  
  
"Join us, Harry...join us..." the Fred-Pippi was currently chanting, advancing toward him through a car that had mysteriously grown. By a lot.  
  
Harry turned and took to his heels, pursued by three rabid Pippi Longstocking impersonators.  
  
"Do not fear us," Ron implored.  
  
"It's ever so nice here," George added.  
  
The next instant, Harry found himself swamped by gravity defying red braids and freckles...  
  
  
  
...And he woke up in his own bed, drenched in sweat, screaming frantically.  
  
"Harry! Harry! What is it?" Ron hissed at him, rolling out of his own four- poster bed within the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, and bounding over to Harry's.  
  
"Wha...? Ron? Where am I?"  
  
"Oh, no," Neville Longbottom sighed, ambling over to Harry's bedside. "He's been dreaming he's back at Privet again. It always gets him disoriented."  
  
"It would get me disoriented, too," Ron admitted, shaking his head sadly and handing his friend a chocolate frog to aid in his recovery from the trauma of the dream.  
  
"It wasn't just Privet Drive again," Harry gasped. "There was a...actually, three.they were..."  
  
"They were what?" Ron urged him gently.  
  
"I can barely stand to say it," Harry shuddered.  
  
"It's okay, Harry, it's all over," Neville reminded him soothingly. "Just tell us what it was."  
  
"It was..."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"It was...it was...Pippi Longstocking..."  
  
"No!" Ron and Neville gasped together, both growing pale with fear.  
  
Harry nodded miserably.  
  
"I dreamt that I was back at Privet Drive, and Ron and his brothers had just come to get me. I thought it was awfully familiar, which is why it seemed strange that no one woke up and tried to pull me back this time. Then, just as I got settled in the back seat, Ron started asking me about my dress."  
  
"Just as if I would!" Ron huffed, quite offended. He knew exactly how much trauma Harry had undergone, being stuck wearing that dress all summer, and he had sworn to himself that he would never, under any circumstances, bring it up ever again, unless Harry had first, thus authorizing him to.  
  
"And then," Harry went on, "George and Fred turned into Pippi Longstocking."  
  
Ron gagged slightly.  
  
"George and Fred are bad enough already..."  
  
Harry nodded emphatically.  
  
"And then I looked for you, to tell you, but...but...YOU had already turned into Pippi Longstocking, too!"  
  
"I hadn't!" Ron exclaimed, voice shaking slightly. Dream or not, it was a terrifying thing to imagine. Being AROUND a Pippi Longstocking was bad enough, but to actually BE one? Unthinkable!  
  
"I'm afraid you had," Harry returned morosely.  
  
Neville sighed.  
  
"That's a nightmare, alright. You've had some year so far."  
  
"Yeah," Ron agreed, grinning as he launched into a brief summary of the first quarter of the book. "First, we kidnapped you from Privet and took you home, then we got stuck on the train platform and missed the train to Hogwarts, then we had to fly the car, and crashed into the Whomping Willow, and THEN we found out we've got a class with that Gilderoy Lockhart idiot!"  
  
"At least Hermione likes him," Harry said consolingly.  
  
"Yes, yes, she does," Ron ground out, unknowingly clutching the edge of Harry's quilt in a death-grip as the sound of creaking teeth filled the air.  
  
"Steady on, there, Ron," Harry snickered as Neville grew bored and returned to his own bed. "What's my quilt ever done to you?"  
  
"What?" Ron blinked. "Oh, sorry, Harry. Forgot where I was for a second."  
  
"Thought you were in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and you'd got Lockhart's neck in your grip?" the dark-haired boy asked mildly.  
  
"Something like that," Ron replied absently, a dreamy look coming into his eyes at the delight of this thought. Then he shook his head frantically. "No! No, that's not it at all!"  
  
"Sure, it isn't," Harry agreed mildly, hiding a grin. "Anyway, I'm fine now, so you can go back to bed."  
  
"If you say so," Ron agreed doubtfully, turning and starting back to his own four-poster bed. "Now, I've got to get some sleep, 'r I'll be a zombie for first day of classes t'morrow. You better sleep, too, Harry."  
  
"Right. G'night, Ron."  
  
"G'night, Harry."  
  
  
  
"My goodness! What on earth happened to you last night? You look awful!" Hermione exclaimed the next morning at the breakfast table as Ron and Harry collapsed into their chairs.  
  
"Nightmare," Harry explained weakly, trying to peel his face off of the table, where it had fallen nearly the second he'd sat down.  
  
Hermione nodded in sympathetic understanding.  
  
"Ooh...was it the one where you've been tied to the highest branch of a tree by insane pandas, and a group of rabid airline attendants are throwing Danielle Steele novels at you?"  
  
Ron blinked, setting down his toast and peering at her strangely.  
  
"Hermione...have you been studying too hard?...already?"  
  
She looked quite astonished.  
  
"What, have you never had that one?"  
  
Ron shook his head apologetically.  
  
"Afraid you're on your own there."  
  
"Oh...well, anyway, Harry, tell me about your nightmare."  
  
Harry looked dubious.  
  
"It isn't the sort of thing to talk about when there are people around you trying to eat..."  
  
"Oh, come now. I'm not squeamish. Just...whisper it in my ear."  
  
Exchanging foreboding glanced with Ron, Harry shrugged, then motioned Hermione to come closer. Then he imparted the terrifying secret of the previous night's dream.  
  
Hermione gasped.  
  
"THREE Pippi Longstockings?!"  
  
The entirety of the Gryffindor table stopped moving and speaking abruptly. There was an immense clatter as everyone simultaneously dropped their forks in dismayed shock. This was followed by the sound of upwards of three hundred students turning green at the same time.  
  
"Hermione!" Harry admonished.  
  
"Sorry," she squeaked, shrinking back, attempting to hide inside her robe, turtle-like.  
  
It is doubtful that anyone in the dining hall should have regained their powers of motion any time that day, had the air not chosen that moment to fill with owls.  
  
"Mail time!" Dumbledore sang from the other end of the hall.  
  
Taking this cue, the teaching staff of Hogwarts leapt to their feet and launched into the daily song and dance number.  
  
"Here's the mail, it never fails, it makes me wanna wag my tail! When it comes, I wanna wail, 'MAIL!'"  
  
"We've just been sued by a guy named Steve!" a random voice proclaimed from outside the dining hall.  
  
  
  
"This place gets stranger by the day," Harry commented, shaking his head. "Why d'you think they instituted that new mail tradition?"  
  
"It's because a certain faction of the population decided that these books needed more musical numbers. I have a feeling we can expect more of these," Hermione replied absently, eyes glued to Ron, who had gone a rather ghastly shade of white at the letter dropped in front of him by the Weasley family owl, who then flapped weakly into the wall.  
  
"It's...it's a...Howler," Neville gasped as he chanced to glance over at Ron's letter.  
  
"Oh, boy," Ron groaned. "I think I'd prefer an attack by three Pippi Longstockings."  
  
"Don't you say such things!" Hermione admonished severely, shaken by the mere thought. "Pippi Longstockings are nothing to joke about!"  
  
"Hermione, have you ever SEEN a Howler?"  
  
She shook her head, baffled.  
  
"You'd better open it," Neville said sadly. "I ignored one from my Gran once. It was horrible! One day, the thing up and ate my pet chinchilla!"  
  
Ron blinked in confusion, then decided that it was usually best not to ask with Neville. He turned to Hermione.  
  
"Just watch what it'll do. Harry, you too."  
  
"I can only imagine," Harry muttered, suddenly not so sure that this experience would be preferable to the one in his dream.  
  
Ron opened the letter, then set it gingerly on the table. The next moment, the angry visage of Molly Weasley hung over the scene, glaring furiously at her youngest son.  
  
"Ronald Weasley!" the translucent image bellowed. "That was positively the most foolish thing I have ever known one of my children to do, and that is no small feat after the incident with Fred and George and all those mail- order cadavers last summer! What was going through that vacuum you call your brain? This is the second time you've stolen the car in the space of a month! Is this becoming a trend, is all I'd like to know. Are you going to need to find you a parole officer? Well, parole officers aside, young man, if you set one more toe out of line, I will be there to drag you off by that toe so fast, your head will spin like a Frisbee! Love, Mother."  
  
For a time, the entire Gryffindor table sat in a silence easily filled by the howls of laughter coming from the Slytherin table.  
  
"W-well...that was quite an education, wasn't it?" Hermione finally commented brightly to Harry.  
  
"Kind of an ironic way to end it, I'd say," Harry replied.  
  
Hermione nodded in agreement.  
  
"I hate everybody," Ron muttered, bright red.  
  
"You deser-" Hermione began.  
  
"If you finish that," Ron ground out, grabbing her collar and pulling her closer until their noses were less than an inch apart, "I'll tell everyone what you were saying in your sleep the other night about Lockhart."  
  
Hermione blinked.  
  
"Er...why were you in a position to know what I was saying in my sleep?"  
  
"Curses!" Ron hissed, breaking character for neither the first nor the last time. "Foiled again!"  
  
"He came up to kiss you goodnight," Parvati giggled from several seats down. "He was obviously disappointed that he didn't get to say hi earlier."  
  
"How d'you know that?! I though you were all asleep!" the ever-foolish Ron exclaimed.  
  
Parvati's eyes widened.  
  
"Did you really?! I was just bluffing!"  
  
"Er...well, uh...me, too!" Ron laughed lamely. "Heh-heh-heh...ugh..."  
  
Very, very luckily for Ron, Hermione had failed to hear any of this exchange, as a book had made its way into her line of vision, and she had been rather busy mauling the person holding it, attempting to claim it for her own. Now she was contentedly engrossed in a copy of 'The First Ninety- Thousand Years of Mankind, Wizard and Muggle: Unabridged,' only her eyes and nose visible above the top of the enormous volume.  
  
"Ow..." whimpered Percy, who had been the unfortunate bearer of this book, as he lay on the floor, twitching ever so slightly.  
  
"Whew..." Harry whistled. "I guess no one ever told him not to get between Hermione and a book."  
  
"Eh...Percy?" Ginny murmured, eyes wide with concern as she knelt next to her brother. "Are...are you okay?"  
  
"He'll be fine, Ginny," Ron assured her easily, reaching for a hot, buttered roll.  
  
However, it seemed that time was not on poor Ron's side that day, as just as he bit into it...  
  
"Ron, hurry up! We've got to get to class!" Hermione exclaimed, tossing her book over her shoulder and tugging Ron to his feet. By the hair.  
  
"Ow!" Ron yelped in unison with Percy, who had given a similar exclamation of pain as the massive volume struck him squarely in the head.  
  
Deciding not to try his luck in the same manner that had brought great pain to two unfortunate Weasleys already this morning, Harry climbed to his feet, slung his book bag over his shoulder, and started from the Great Hall.  
  
Yes, another ordinary day was underway at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A shame the ordinariness wouldn't last...  
  
  
  
  
  
End Notes: [Blink] Wow...that was odd, even for me. I don't know what this sudden firm conviction of mine is that Pippi Longstocking is the most frightening thing ever, but...well, let's just say that this will probably be a recurring gag, which will likely work to the detriment of the story, but what the heck. What's a parody for if not to do the same stupid joke, over and over and over and over? ^_^  
  
As well, it appears as though the Ron/Hermione 'shipperdom has begun already...I do hope it won't make anyone nauseous by the time the story's over...maybe I should get everyone to sign a waiver, absolving me of any responsibility, should any readers of this be plagued afterwards by severe and lasting stomach problems, or tooth decay. 


	3. Stupidity in a Saucer

Chapter 3  
  
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"Where IS he?" a little redheaded girl in the front of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom moaned, her eyes filling up with tears and her little dragon tail standing up on end with her sheer anger.  
  
"Relax, Mink," the little blonde girl next to her said easily. "We know that there's a tall, good-looking blond man teaching one of the classes here, right? It's GOT to be him!"  
  
"But, Lufa, we've been to almost every class!"  
  
"All the more reason that this'll be the one he's teaching!" Lufa turned to the girl with rampantly curly brown hair and several more books than anyone could possibly need piled on the desktop in front of her, directly behind her. "Excuse me, does a tall, blond, good-looking man teach this class?"  
  
"Oh, he certainly does," the girl sighed, clasping her hands, her eyes growing shiny.  
  
"Rrr." growled the redheaded boy beside her.  
  
"Thank-you!" Lufa chirped, turning back around. "See, Mink? Everything will be alright."  
  
"Yeah, I suppose so," Mink sighed, offering her friend a small smile.  
  
This was as far as the conversation between the young Dragon-half and her trusted best friend was allowed to go, as the next instant, an ecstatic squeal of 'here he comes!' brought an effective end to the hush in the room, which was instantly replaced by the excited chatter of at least a dozen young females and a little silver-haired boy in the corner. But then, little Kuja had always been odd...  
  
"It's him!" Mink exclaimed.  
  
Both Mink and Lufa turned around and gazed expectantly at the door. At the first flash of blond hair, both were out of their desks and to the door in an instant.  
  
"Waay! Waay! Saucer's so great! Waay! Waay!" they both chanted, dancing in giddy circles around a very befuddled Gilderoy Lockhart, their Hogwarts robes flapping merrily behind them.  
  
"Well! This is a warm welcome!" Lockhart grinned down at the two girls, who promptly stopped their skipping and chanting, and looked at each other in baffled disappointment.  
  
"It's...not Dick Saucer..." Mink whispered brokenly.  
  
"I'm sorry, Mink," Lufa crooned comfortingly to her friend, rubbing her back soothingly. "Tell you what: I think I know where ELSE he might be. Why don't we go look for him?"  
  
"You're the best pal ever, Lufa!"  
  
"I know," Lufa grinned. "Come on, Pia!"  
  
"O-kay!" a tiny girl, at least five years younger than anyone else in the room, chirped, bounding toward them. "Come on, Mappy!"  
  
A little ball of fur rolled reluctantly to its feet and leapt onto the top of little Pia's head.  
  
And with that, three girls and a hamster darted from the room under the watchful and confused eyes of thirty students and a professor.  
  
"Well, that was a little unexpected, wasn't it?" Lockhart commented smilingly to the class.  
  
"A little unexpected?" Ron echoed quietly to Harry. "I think those girls were barking mad!"  
  
"I know!" Hermione agreed emphatically. "Even if they were looking for someone else, it was just plain rude to leave before they'd even got a chance to know him!"  
  
"Rrr..." Ron growled again.  
  
"Ron, you've already said that," Harry snickered.  
  
"Ah! Harry Potter!" a voice called from behind him, and, horrified, he turned slowly to meet his doom head-on.  
  
His doom, he reflected as he stared into Gilderoy Lockhart's smiling face, was rather a letdown. His doom from the first book had been much more impressive...  
  
"Heard about your little stunt last night, Potter," Lockhart grinned, slapping him on the back. "I blame myself, of course."  
  
"But how-" Harry began desperately.  
  
"Well, it's simple, really. Once I gave you a little taste of fame, you wanted more. That's why you flew the car into the tree-"  
  
"But that wasn't why at all!"  
  
"-wearing a blinking yellow tiara."  
  
"Well, maybe a little," Harry grinned, recalling with great fondness the flashing headgear he had stolen from Dudley. It always made him feel like a star when he wore it...  
  
"Just as I thought, lad. Just as I thought. Just mind you don't make this sort of thing a habit," Lockhart warned gently, patting him on the top of the head.  
  
"Well, I suppose not," Harry conceded reluctantly. "But I'll be awfully sorry to give up my tiara. Hermione, you'll take good care of it for me, won't you?"  
  
"Hmm?" Hermione hummed absently, eyes slightly glazed.  
  
Ron grit his teeth at the little hearts dancing around her head as she gazed at Professor Lockhart in rapt attention. He snatched up one of the little hearts and hurled it at the blond man at the front of the room.  
  
"Owie!" Lockhart whimpered, clutching his arm where the tiny projectile had struck it. "Who threw that?! Whoever it was, I commend you on your excellent throwing arm-"  
  
"I didn't even try," Ron admitted to Harry with a shrug.  
  
"-but now I'll have to take an emergency trip to the medical tower! I think honest damage has been done!"  
  
"Wimp," Ron and Harry muttered together.  
  
"Will you be alright to get there on your own?" Hermione asked anxiously. "Should some of us accompany you?"  
  
"No, no, I'll be alright," Lockhart assured her with a dazzling smile.  
  
"He's so brave," eighteen little girls sighed together, hearts dancing around their heads so thickly that it was a wonder anyone could see.  
  
"But before I leave, I'll give you all your first hands-on lesson. This is, after all, Defense Against the Dark Arts. You will learn, over the course of this year, to defend yourselves against the vilest creatures imaginable, against things too horrifying to imagine. I have here a cage full of just such creatures."  
  
"If it's Pippi Longstockings," Harry announced, his voice shaking slightly, "I'm quitting Hogwarts and starting a career as a shoe-shine boy!"  
  
"Pippi Longstockings?" Professor Lockhart laughed. "No, my dear boy, it's worse. Far, far more terrifying."  
  
"It's not...the Sweet Valley twins, is it?" Neville Longbottom gulped.  
  
Lockhart stiffened in horror.  
  
"Young man, don't even joke about such things!"  
  
Neville blinked.  
  
"I was just asking," he muttered to Hermione.  
  
"I know, Neville," she said consolingly. "I know."  
  
"No," Lockhart was meanwhile continuing, "the creatures are simply...this!"  
  
He yanked a blue wool blanket off of a large birdcage to reveal a multitude of flapping, squawking little blue people with wings.  
  
"Cornish pixies?!" Seamus exclaimed incredulously. "What's so scary about them?"  
  
"Oh, you'll see, my boy," Lockhart chuckled, unlatching the cage and quickly scampering from the room. Then he poked his head back in.  
  
"You three," he called. "Take care of these little devils, would you?"  
  
"What three's he talking about?" Neville asked.  
  
"Who d'you think?" Seamus snorted. "The story's called Harry Potter and the Latest Great Threat to the Universe, isn't it? If anyone else were supposed to take care of them, it'd be called Someone Else and the Latest Great Threat to the Universe."  
  
"Y-yeah, but that only explains Harry. Who else?"  
  
"Neville, who spends every waking second around Harry?"  
  
"Collin Creevy," Neville answered instantly, and from his desk, Harry shuddered at the thought of his newly self-appointed stalker.  
  
"Besides Collin Creevy," Seamus replied, patience starting to slip. "Try someone in this class."  
  
Neville thought very carefully.  
  
"RON AND HERMIONE, YOU IDIOT!" Seamus howled.  
  
Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione had figured this out for themselves, and were busily aiding Harry in the round-up of thirty insane Cornish pixies.  
  
"Noooooo! My tiara!" Harry howled as one particularly cruel pixy buzzed about the room, waving the glittering headpiece, procured from his half- open backpack, and laughing smugly.  
  
"Noooooo! His tiara!" Hermione howled. "He was going to give that to me!"  
  
Harry wheeled on her.  
  
"Only to look after until the end of the year!"  
  
"Right, right, of course," Hermione sighed, bidding all fond dreams of playing the fairy queen at home this summer good-bye...right before she recalled that she had had little interest in dress-up since growing from a child of nine into a mature and sedate young woman of twelve.  
  
While she was busily coming to perhaps the first logical conclusion anyone had had that year, Harry, by now seeing red, was out for the blood of the cruel tiara-thieving Cornish pixy. It looped merrily through the air, as though drunk on whatever it is that pixies drink to escape the doldrums of everyday life, or at least to dress it up in the pleasant glow that always comes with alcohol. Eyes narrowing, Harry aimed his wand at it, and the next moment, it dropped, squawking, to the floor, at which point he picked it up by its now leaden wings, and threw it into the cage.  
  
"Hmph!" he exclaimed, placing the tiara gingerly back in his book bag. "Teach you to steal MY dress-up things!"  
  
"There are some things I'd rather not think about," Ron muttered to the pixy he was currently poking back into the cage, "and this is about ninety- three percent of them."  
  
"Oh, come now, Ron," Hermione chided. "I thought Harry looked rather cute in his tiara."  
  
"Rrr..." Ron growled for neither the first time that day, nor the last.  
  
"Although, not quite so cute as Ginny did when he let her borrow it for the afternoon," Hermione continued, completely oblivious of her friend's less than efficient state of thinking, nor to the slight blush on the face of her other friend after he nodded his agreement a little too emphatically.  
  
"N-not that, y'know, I was really LOOKING, or anything," Harry hastened to assure both Ron and Hermione, neither of whom were by now listening as the threat of Cornish pixies once again drew them out of their meandering side- rhetoric and back into the plot.  
  
"Hey!" Ron bellowed as a pixy got hold of his snapped in half wand and yanked the Spellotape off of the fracture. The pixy then tossed one half of the wand to another pixy, and the two little creatures began a very obviously choreographed bow staff fight.  
  
"How cute," Hermione giggled.  
  
Ron glared at her.  
  
"Hey, it's not your wand they've got hold of."  
  
"Oh, lighten up, Ron," Hermione implored in a great show of irony as one little blue creature poked Seamus repeatedly in the side of the head and the other attempted to shove its half of Ron's wand up Neville's nose without his noticing. "Honestly!"  
  
"Glad you feel that way, Hermione," Ron grinned. "Because it looks like that one's got your copy of 'Voyages With Vampires.'"  
  
"DIE, DEVIL PIXY!" Hermione shrieked, hurling Ron's copy of 'Voyages With Vampires' at it.  
  
One unconscious pixy and two copies of 'Voyages With Vampires' fell to the ground with three thuds.  
  
"Urk!" the pixy squawked as first one, then the other book struck it squarely in the head.  
  
Batting away the pixy busily poking him in the head, Seamus gingerly picked up the unconscious fairy and stuffed it back into the cage.  
  
"Oh, lighten up, Hermione," Ron implored mischievously. "Honestly!"  
  
"The bloody creature was bending the pages!" the little brunette exclaimed, close to tears.  
  
"Yeah? And that one's getting Neville-bogies all over my wand," Ron said with a philosophical shrug. "But at least this is better than taking notes."  
  
And with that, both friends joined Harry in the task of rounding up the remainder of the pixies before they could do further damage.  
  
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Fifteen grueling minutes later...  
  
"Well! Thank goodness that's over with!" Hermione chirped breathlessly as she sank wearily into her seat next to Neville.  
  
"Yeah," Neville agreed miserably, carefully rubbing his nose and shooting Ron an apologetic look in response to the redheaded lad's murderous one as he carefully wiped the end of his wand clean. "You think Lockhart's coming back?"  
  
"Oh, I do hope so!" Hermione exclaimed, twisting around to look anxiously at the door. "I hope he wasn't hurt badly!"  
  
"Rrr..." said Ron pleasantly.  
  
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The next morning, Harry woke with a start from a terrifying dream of being Fay Wray in the clutches of King Kong to the equally terrifying reality of being Harry Potter the Exhausted Gryffindor Seeker in the clutches of Oliver Wood the Psychotically Obsessed Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.  
  
"Er, Oliver," he began in a frightened whimper as the burly sixth year boy threw a pile of clothes at him and hoped for the best, "what are you doing?"  
  
"What d'you think, Potter? I'm getting you ready for practice!"  
  
"At three in the morning?" Harry murmured in disbelief, wondering if there was some way he could break his leg quickly, and thus be left to a few more precious hours of sleep.  
  
"Three in the morning?" Oliver repeated, frowning as he glanced at the clock. "Oh, buggeration...I'm doing it again."  
  
"Doing what again?"  
  
"Well, have you ever been so worried about sleeping in that you kept getting up at weird times during the night and getting ready?"  
  
"Uh...no," Harry replied hesitantly. "Usually when I get up in the middle of the night it's to roast an ox for Uncle Vernon or Dudley because they're feeling peckish. So, what're you worried about sleeping in for?"  
  
"A new Quidditch season is upon us, Potter," Oliver began in a grand voice. "We will win the cup this year, or we will die trying!"  
  
"Oh, buggeration," Harry whimpered.  
  
"Anyway," the older boy continued brightly, "we're practicing at six this morning, but I've been so worried about sleeping in that I've already been up to get ready about three times! Don't you remember the other times I've dragged you out of bed and thrown you in the shower?"  
  
"Er, no..."  
  
"You really were dead to the world!" Oliver laughed, slapping Harry on the back and sending him pitching forward to the ground, where he proceeded to simply curl up and go to sleep, cuddling a sock thrown carelessly to the floor the night before.  
  
"Sleep..." Harry droned.  
  
Oliver chuckled, shaking his head helplessly.  
  
"Well, see you at six, then, eh, Potter?"  
  
"Sleep..." Harry droned again, drooling slightly on the ever-unfortunate Neville's sock.  
  
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The next thing Harry became aware of was that he was on his feet, propped up against a wall, with a shoe shoved into his mouth, wearing a backwards shirt and a pair of inside-out pants.  
  
"Rise and shine, Potter!" Oliver's voice boomed, shaking him out of his half-dozing state.  
  
"Come back at six," Harry groaned, spitting the shoe from his mouth in disgust and entertaining brief, shining images of hurling it at Oliver.  
  
"It IS six," Oliver informed him, staring at him oddly. "Now, c'mon! The rest of the team's probably already at the pitch!"  
  
With that, he seized Harry's arm and dragged him bodily out of the room, still partially dressed and with mussed up hair.  
  
"Sleep..." Harry whimpered mournfully.  
  
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End Notes: My word, this took a long time to churn out! Or rather, it took me a long time to get at it. Once I had sat down with my copy of 'Harry Potter Blah-Blah-Blah Secrets,' it came almost on its own. I guess that's what happens when you're just re-telling the plot with your own strange twist... [Rubs the back of her head sheepishly]  
  
Anyway, sorry it took so long, and thank-you to whoever's still reading! ^_^  
  
Oh, and I do hope that the reviewer who mentioned the Sweet Valley twins in their review doesn't mind that I've worked them into the story. The opportunity just presented itself, and you're very right: they ARE endlessly frightening.  
  
And as for Harry/Ginny-ness, I think it shall appear in here, albeit less blatantly than Ron/Hermione-ness. As it turns out, Harry and Ginny are my third-favourite Harry Potter pairing, after Percy/Penelope and, of course, the cutest pairing in the world, Ron/Hermione. ^_^ Harry/Ginny thus far seems to be tied with Arthur/Molly (the older Weasleys) after recently reading a lovely bit of smut with the two of them, set during one of Molly's pregnancies. I can't recall the author or title at the moment, but it was beautifully written, and insanely sweet. ^_^  
  
Oh, one more thing: I don't own Mink, Lufa, Pia, Mappy, or the mention of Dick Saucer. Those all belong to the guy who created the anime, 'Dragonhalf. They're his drug-induced creations, and I wouldn't dream of trying to take credit for them. ^_^ Anyway, I promise that this is the last obscure anime reference I'll do. ^_^ 


	4. Stupidity in a Can

Chapter 4

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The Gryffindor Quidditch team trudged wearily out to the pitch, led by Oliver, who moved in something that could not by any means be described a trudge. Had young Mr. Wood not been so very proud of his manly nature, it could be said that his great exuberance led him to bounce. However, Oliver Wood was indeed very manly, and very proud to be, and thus would have buried the unfortunate soul who dared to suggest that he had bounced through the dew-wet grasses of early morning, beneath those same dew-wet grasses.

   "Er...wasn't there something we forgot to do?" Katie Bell wondered, scratching her head as she wondered why exactly it was so drafty. Ordinarily, their Quidditch robes kept them warm – almost TOO warm.

   "I don't think so," George Weasley yawned sleepily, rubbing his eyes with one hand and adjusting his polka-dot boxer shorts with the other.

Fred, catching sight of this, snickered.

   "George, you're running around almost starkers!"

At this startling revelation, George blinked and looked down. 

   "Hey, so I am!" Then he, too, began to snicker as he caught sight of his twin brother's boxer shorts, identical to his own in a show of synchronized 'underwearing' that even the bravest soul wouldn't have dared to ask about. "And so are you!"

   "And so is Alicia and Katie," Fred noted appreciatively.

   "AND Angelina!" George added gleefully.

Together, the Weasley twins took in the sight of the three girls, indeed clad only in relatively modest knickers and brassieres that nonetheless managed to give the various young men wandering around the grounds at that ungodly hour quite a show.

Colin Creevy, watching eagerly from the bleachers, felt quite as though he had died and gone to heaven. 

Until, of course...

Oliver came to a dead stop and turned around slowly, fixing his team with a suspicious gaze.

   "What in buggery are you all doing outside in your underwear?"

Fred snorted.

   "Now that you mention it, freezing off our-"

   "THANK you, Weasley," Oliver hastened to interrupt. "Are you all really that tired that you forgot to put on your robes?"

   "Yes!" came the collective shout of the team, save Harry, who had curled up on the ground, cuddling an unsuspecting bunny that had happened past, drooling slightly on it.

   "Sleep," he droned happily, nuzzling the bunny's fuzzy little head with his chin.

Needless to say, the bunny did not approve.

   "You bunch of wimps!" Oliver barked. "Alright! Back to the change rooms! And get some clothes on this time!"

   "Sleep," Harry whimpered sadly as George and Fred stooped to haul him from the ground. 

The bunny bounded gratefully to safety as the Gryffindor team started back to the changing rooms.

   "Mother, I've become a man," Colin Creevy sighed reverently to himself, camera trained on Alicia's retreating backside, frantically snapping a final picture or two.

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   "Now," Oliver began sternly fifteen minutes later, once the Gryffindor team had woken up sufficiently to struggle into enough clothing to reach a dress code of some sort, "as you all know, a new year is upon us. And you know what that means."

   "Sleep?" Harry asked pleadingly, cuddling a towel close and preparing to curl up on the hard, wooden benches.

The older boy glared at him amid the snickers that followed at this.

   "No! It means we've another chance to win the Quidditch Cup! And we WILL win the Quidditch Cup, even if it means all your lives!"

   "He's got that gleam in his eye," Fred whispered to George loudly enough for anyone who wanted to, to easily overhear. "Be very careful. Any sudden movements might provoke an attack."

   "Oh, shut up, Weasley!" Oliver bellowed. "Now. If I may, I'd like to discuss with you a few techniques by which we shall reach our goal." 

As he spoke, the burly young man dragged out from behind a conveniently placed towel bin several sheets of poster board.

   "He's got diagrams," Alicia whimpered to Katie.

   "And lots of them," Katie groaned. "At this rate, our seventh year might end before we actually get to play!"

   "Oh that won't happen," Angelina reminded them consolingly. "After all, this series would really go downhill if the next three books happened with Harry in the change rooms, wouldn't it?"

   "Yeah," Katie agreed, quite comforted by this. Then she frowned. "Um, books?"

   "N-never mind," Angelina hastened to say, looking away and whistling innocently.

   "Now," Oliver was meanwhile beginning, "over the summer, I spent some time thinking about last year, and what happened. I realized that without knowing your enemies and their weaknesses, you can't exploit those weaknesses and crush them into a bloody, drippy pulp."

   "Are you beginning to think that maybe we should've picked a safer extra-curricular?" Alicia murmured to Katie, who had adopted an expression very much like that of a particularly small animal staring down the wrong end of an Unforgivable Curse. "Like, maybe the quilting club or something?"

   "Shh!" Katie hissed. The last thing she wanted was to attract Oliver's attention directly at her right now...

   "Once it became clear that the only way to win is to do everything you can to draw your opponent's shortcomings to the forefront, I began to compile a short list of the said shortcomings of each other house's team," Oliver continued, totally unaware that anyone in the room was less than completely absorbed in his speech. "The Ravenclaw team, for instance, is very flammable."

   "Why do I have a terrible sinking feeling about where this is going?" George wondered aloud.

   "And so, I have here a diagram of something that might give us just a little bit of an edge."

Oliver proudly held up a diagram of a very complex-looking bit of machinery with little wiggling arrows pointing to various components of it. The Gryffindor team gawped in horror.

   "A little bit of an edge," Fred exclaimed, voice shaking with what everyone else considered to be very ill-timed laughter. "Oliver, that's a flamethrower!" 

   "Yeah," Oliver agreed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "I know the rocket launcher might have been a little more effective, but I figured we'd go easy on the Ravenclaws. They're good fellows. Save the rocket launchers for the Slytherins!"

Harry nodded thoughtfully at this, having a hard time disagreeing with the logic, and having a harder time banishing the delightful mental image of Draco Malfoy being blown into tiny bits. Rough luck, though, that he wasn't on the Quidditch team...

   "Wonderful, Oliver," Angelina commented dryly. "So what do we use for the Hufflepuff team?"

   "Glue bombs," Oliver replied beamingly. "I figure, they're a bit slower than the other teams, so I'm just emphasizing what's already there."

   "That's sick," George announced, trying very hard to look appalled.

   "Thanks," the older boy grinned.

   "Now off to the pitch?" Alicia asked hopefully.

 Oliver laughed.

   "Are you crazy, Spinnet? I haven't even gotten started yet!"

The rest of the team exchanged long-suffering glances and settled back for a long, long meeting.

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Seven days, one hour, and twelve minutes later, the team left the change rooms, all looking, except for Oliver, as though they were really beginning to reconsider the wisdom of Quidditch as a general rule. Alicia and Katie, along with George in one of the more worrisome turns of events in recent days, planned to look into the Quilting Club the second practice ended. Angelina and Fred were doing what they could to dissuade their jaded comrades from this change in hobby. Fred in particular did not want to deal with being mistaken for "that Weasley boy in the Quilting Club; probably a little bent, y'know..."

Harry, however, was barely aware of the heated conversation going on just behind him. His mind was still churning with the meeting of the past week. Once Oliver had finished with his discussion on glue guns, rocket launchers, flamethrowers and the like, he had moved onto the idea of discarding brooms entirely and playing the game from the cockpits of gigantic robotic exoskeletons. 

Then, once a piece of ceiling tile had come loose, completely of its own accord and not at all due to the meddling of any particular author, and certainly not the one who happens to be writing this story [whistles innocently], and dropped on his head, knocking him firmly back into character, he had moved on with his intended speech, pausing for a moment to wonder over all these diagrams of weapons of mass annihilation.

The intended speech, the Gryffindor team agreed unanimously, was scarcely better. It seemed that over the course of the summer, Oliver had picked up a new obsession: that of musicals, due likely to the tampering of the aforementioned author who had nothing to do with the ceiling tile landing on his head. As such, what had begun as an intention to use several magically enhanced diagrams to discuss the new plays that they would be practicing that year had quickly turned into a ridiculously overblown musical number. Where the dancing goats had come from would remain to Harry a mystery until his dying day. Not to mention, that massive chorus of ninety-eight singers, give or take.

Still, the team had been able to take their captain's rather...bizarre new methods in stride until the pyrotechnics had begun.

It may or may not be a commonly known fact that playing with fireworks, firecrackers, or fire-anything else when one is not trained in their use is a hazardous idea, to say the least.

Oliver was not trained in their use.

Thus, it had only been a matter of seconds after the pyrotechnic display had begun, before George Weasly had leapt to his feet, and gone careening wildly about the room, screaming in fear and pain due to the spark that had landed on his head, thus catching his hair on fire, and thus solidifying his intention of looking into a different pastime.

As the flames were barely a different color for the young man's hair, the rest of the team reflected that poor George had gone quite mad from sheer boredom.

Still, by the time the Gryffindor Quidditch team had reached the pitch, their mutual love of Quidditch had overcome what had been surely one of the worst meetings they had ever had, and all were feeling quite friendly to Oliver again, and quite anxious to mount their brooms and get the practice underway.

Just as Oliver called for everyone to take their positions, two figures became visible on the horizon, both waving frantically at Harry.

   "Where've you been all week, Harry," one of them shouted.

Immediately recognizing his two best friends once they had drawn a little nearer, he waved back, and turned his attention to Oliver as the two turned their attention back to the conversation they had apparently been engrossed in.

   "Please?" Harry overhead Hermione say pleadingly as she and Ron approached the pitch.

   "No!" Ron replied immediately.

   "Pleeeease?"

   "No!"

   "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?"

   "Hermione, I don't care how long you draw out the word 'please,' I'm still not trading copies of 'Voyages with Vampires' with you, just because you bent a couple of your pages in that fight with the pixies!"

   "But why, Ron?" she asked sadly, fixing him with huge, sad eyes, trembling adorably with tears that Harry wouldn't have bet a Knut were real. Unfortunately, he also wouldn't have bet a Knut that Ron would figure that out. Then and there, Harry made a pact with himself that he would never, ever let a girl play him like that. "You don't care what condition your books are in!"

   "Forget it! It's not like mine's in any better shape, anyway," he added with a grin as he withdrew his copy.

Hermione blinked. 

   "Ron, why are you carrying that around in your pocket?"

Ron shrugged.

   "I figure it might be good to throw at some small, annoying creature – or, y'know,

Malfoy. With my wand broken and all – but anyway, see? My book's pages are all bent, too."

Accepting the copy, the little brunette sighed disapprovingly.

   "Ron," she began, patronizing and vaguely irritated in an instant, "you ought to take better care of your books."  
Ron sputtered helplessly.

   "Isn't this whole conversation because YOU didn't take care of YOUR book? And anyway, you wanna talk about what happened to mine? Who was the one who threw it at that pixy?"

   "Alright," Hermione agreed reluctantly. "But I certainly didn't do this."

She held up the book, open to the photo of Lockhart in the back cover. 'Death to Lockhart' and 'Lockhart Stinks' and 'Stupid Pretty-Boy Git' were scrawled across the glossy picture on the book jacket in angry red ink.

   "What can I say?" Ron shrugged, sullen and just a little sheepish. "I thought I'd lose it and kill the real one if that photo winked at me one more time."

Doubtlessly, Hermione's answer to this would have been an angry one, and in the glorious and oddly adorable tradition of these two, would have prompted a quarrel of epic proportions, had the plot fairies not chosen just that moment to decide that they were bored and thus kick the Slytherin Quidditch team, waiting just off-screen, in the head until they approached. Not only this, the fairies thought enthusiastically as they kicked joyously away, but the Slytherin team were just so darned much fun to kick in the head! They made such interesting hollow wooden sounds!

   "Hey, what are they doing here?" Ron demanded angrily as the Slytherins approached.

Hermione squinted.

   "And why do they have...little fairies with t-shirts that say PLOT, kicking them in the heads?"

   "Dunno," Oliver growled as he pushed past the two, "but it almost makes me wish I were a fairy."

Harry, who had chosen this moment to stop mourning the loss of a few more precious hours of sleep, or at least a nice, crisp piece of toast slathered liberally with marmalade to help wake him up, and to start paying attention to what was going on around him, decided mournfully that he desperately hoped he had simply heard his team captain's comment out of context, and that the context would remove any...worrisome implications from the words.

   "All right, then," Oliver muttered, starting toward the Slytherin team. "Clear off!" 

   "'Fraid you'll have to do the clearing, Wood," Marcus Flint, the Slytherin team captain, smirked.

   "We've got the pitch booked this morning!" 

   "Not anymore."

   "What's that supposed to mean?"

Wordlessly, the other boy handed Oliver a note.

Grimacing inwardly – he had never liked reading particularly – Oliver unfolded the note and read it quickly. At least, as quickly as he could.

   "What?!" he exclaimed fifteen minutes later. "'By the authority given to me in the name of the Brotherhood of the Large-Nosed Greasy-Haired Yet Oddly Alluring Right Bastards, I grant the Slytherin team special permission to use the Quidditch pitch this morning, owing to the need to train their new Seeker. Professor Snape. Also, I give them special permission to rummage through other peoples' book bags and eat all their sweets.' I think you put that last part on yourselves."

   "Did not," Flint shot back, looking away guiltily.

   "Then why's it in a totally different handwriting?"

   "Er...because his alternate personality took over right then."

   "Hey!" a smooth, oily voice, the smoothness and oiliness of which was slightly lost amid its clear annoyance, exclaimed from behind him. "You're forgetting something, aren't you?"

Flint blinked, his expression totally blank with confusion.

   "Huh?"

The owner of the voice, yet unseen, blocked by several very large boys, sighed.

   "The new addition to the team?" it reminded them, beginning to get rather miffed.

   "Oh, right! Our new brooms! Aren't they purty?" Flint beamed as the entire team, in unison, lifted and waved their brooms, gleaming fetchingly in the light of early morning, before the eyes of the horrified Gryffindors.

   "Not the brooms!" the voice from behind him exclaimed. "Your new Seeker!"

   "Oh, right, right, right. We have a new Seeker," Flint announced, this revelation rather less impressive than it might have been, had the wind not been totally robbed from its sails by his own stupidity.

   "Oh, yeah?" Oliver sneered. "And who is he?"

The members of the Slytherin team stepped aside, and a small, slight boy stepped forward, his trademark smirk, without which his face very well might have fallen off, revealing him immediately to be none other than young Draco Malfoy.

   "Draco!" Harry exclaimed in horror, which quickly melted into delight as it occurred to him that now he could very well see Draco blown apart by a rocket launcher, if Oliver was indeed serious about his...slightly antisocial game plan.

   "Wow!" Colin Creevy called from the bleachers. "She's really pretty! So delicate and refined!"

   "Shut up!" Draco bellowed as best he could.

   "He's right, though," Harry smirked. "You _are_ very pretty and delicate, Draco."

   "Pretty, _and_ he buys brooms for all these players in order to secure his place on the team!" Hermione added, giggling. "What a prize, this one!"

   "No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood," Draco snarled, feeling that this phrase was oddly familiar, although the set-up the last time he had used it had been distinctly less silly.

   "I am not filthy," Hermione protested, quite wounded. "I took a bath just last night! No, hold on, last night I read my book. Well, last night – no, I read that night, too. The night before, then...no, wait a second..."

However, no one paid attention to Hermione's odd little speech, as they were all slightly occupied in shouting at Draco in fury.

Ron was doing slightly more than shouting. After his nose had ceased its bleeding at the thought of Hermione in a soapy bathtub filled with bubbles, taking that bath, whenever it had been, he reached into his robes and withdrew the first item that might prove itself useful.

   "You'll pay for that, Malfoy," he growled, feeling much the same sense of déjà vu that Draco had, as he wound up and let the large book fly at the blond boy's head.

The Lockhart on the cover was exceedingly proud of this young redheaded boy at that moment. To be sure, he had had his doubts after he had found himself scribbled on – his favourite photo, too! But it seemed as though things were looking up. The boy seemed to be very well aware that one must protect a pretty girl's honour at all costs. After all, chivalry was no less important than it ever had been, and could often lead to getting one's picture in the paper. A wonderful human-interest story! And so, then and there, the Lockhart in the photo decided to reward the young man for his behaviour.

However, Lockhart's photo was little, if any, better at this whole 'doing things right' business than the real Lockhart was...

A bolt of blue light shot from the book, and the next instant, Ron found himself doubled over as a steady emigration of slugs from his mouth began to occur. 

   "Oh, no!" Hermione shrieked. "We've got to get him to Hagrid's, Harry!"

   "Why?" Harry wanted to know, scratching his head. "Wouldn't he be better off in the medical tower?"

She wheeled on him furiously, dropping Ron's arm so that he sagged weakly to the ground on one side. 

   "Don't ask silly questions like that! I just have this feeling that something really important will happen when we get to Hagrid's, alright?!"

Harry shrugged, gripped Ron's arm more tightly, and the two dragged their slug-spewing friend across the fields.

   "Y'know the worst thing?" Ron gasped between retching. "My wand would've done the same thing, probably."


	5. Stupidity in a Glass

Chapter 5

* * *

"You say his book did this to him?" Hagrid asked, frowning.

Ron looked up briefly from the bucket that Hagrid had procured for him, and which was rapidly filling up with slugs.

"Actually, it was the picture of – " Here, the boy was interrupted as several more slugs emigrated from his mouth to the bucket. " – that pretty bloke on the back cover."

Hagrid blinked.

"So, it was Lockhart's picture," he said slowly. "Not surprised. Man himself's a bit of a—"

"Now, that isn't fair, Hagrid!" Hermione broke in. "What've you got against Professor Lockhart?"

"He was just by, unloadin' a lot of useless advice on how I oughter be doin' my job. An' he wound up with a speech about how to get my beard soft n' silky wit' his special line of hair-care products!"

"Ooh! He's achieved his lifelong secret ambition, then!" Hermione squealed excitedly. "I'm so glad for him!"

"Rrr-ugh!" Ron said, spewing forth several new slimy friends.

Hagrid shook his head.

"Miserable thing fer a book t'do t'someone…"

Harry nodded, but Hermione made a small noise of protest.

"I don't think it's right to blame the poor book," she said. "I'm sure he was only trying to help."

"Will you stop sticking up for him, Hermione?" Ron exclaimed in annoyance before disappearing once again into the bucket, which was becoming quickly lined with slugs. "This is really disgusting…"

Hermione looked rather as though she agreed, and seemed to be fighting with herself over whether to give into instinct and get as far away from the slugs as possible, or to stick close to Ron in gratitude for the fact that he had got this way trying to stand up for her.

"So, the book just randomly turned on ye while you were carryin' it, eh?" Hagrid said, shaking his head. "Dangerous things, these books. S'why I never bothered with 'em meself."

"Actually," Hermione spoke up slowly, blushing ever so slightly, "the book didn't cast the spell on him until he tried to throw it at Draco after Draco called me some name or other."

"Bloody disgusting name," Ron gasped.

"Yeah, it was," Harry agreed, grimacing. In truth, he had no idea what it had meant, but for everyone to react the way they had, it _had_ to be bad.

"Actually, I meant that Draco's a bloody disgusting name for anyone to give their kid," Ron admitted in between bouts of slug-spewing. "But what Malfoy called Hermione was pretty bad, too."

"He said I didn't take baths, or something," Hermione said, wounded. "And that's not true at all! I take baths all the time! The bath is one of the best places to read, especially when it's a bubble bath, and you just lie in the warm water and soak for hours, and—"

"Hagrid, Ron's nose just started to bleed, too," Harry broke in urgently. "D'you think that's something to do with the charm that book put on him?"

Hagrid grinned.

"No, I think that's from somethin' else."

Harry blinked.

"Uh…okay. So, Hagrid, what _is_ a Mudblood, anyway?"

Hagrid's jaw tightened in anger.

"Ye don't mean that's what Malfoy called her!"

"Right! That was it," Hermione exclaimed. "Mudblood!" Then she frowned. "Somehow I have the feeling that I should be having an angst moment right now. Ooh! That's right! We have a book with us! Ron, can I borrow your copy of Voyages With Vampires for the moment?"

"Just keep it away from me," Ron said emphatically between mouthfuls of slugs, inching away from the girl and the book.

"So, woul' ye tell me, Harry," Hagrid began reproachfully now that it seemed apparent that Hermione was blatantly _not_ in need of comforting and reassurances, "what's this I been hearin' 'bout you givin' out signed pictures, an' me not gettin' one? Thought we were friends, Harry. Grave disappointment."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Hagrid," Harry said consolingly. "Honestly, yours was one of the first I sent. Perhaps Hedwig simply lost it somewhere and didn't let me know? I'll send another next time I'm in the Owlery."

"Er, Harry," Hermione began much more tactfully than she might have dealing with someone who hadn't promised to give her a very nice tiara to borrow this year. "I think Hagrid was only joking."

"Oh," Harry said, crestfallen. "Er, yeah! So was I! Only…joking. Right. Heh-heh-heh…ugh."

"I'm starting to feel even sicker," Ron groaned.

"Me, too," Hermione said, rolling her eyes slightly. "I might need to share that bucket, Ron."

"Just mind the slugs."

"When the two of yeh 're done with yer little moment, come see what I've got growin' out back," Hagrid called with a grin, beckoning the three to the garden outside his cabin.

"Argh!" Harry yelped as his eyes lit on several massive pumpkins. "It's a hostile takeover by vegetables! I knew it would happen someday!"

"They're fer the Halloween feast," Hagrid explained with a chuckle.

"You mean, the produce army has chosen Halloween for the day of their attack?!" Harry gasped. "How diabolical!"

"Uh…Harry," Ron began, tapping his friend on the shoulder. "They're not attacking. Hagrid's just growing them."

"I knew that," Harry rejoined, not missing a beat despite his great amount of internal fumbling to regain his mental bearings at this revelation. "So, what've you got to feed a pumpkin to get it the size of a Buick?"

"Uh…er…it's just a little somethin' I whipped up," Hagrid coughed, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "And, y'know, a bit of extra help."

"So, is this by any chance a little "magical help"?' Hermione asked, a little disapprovingly. "Still, you've done a fantastic job. Almost," she added with the air of one making a great concession, "as good as _my_ Engorgement Charms."

"That's just what little Ginny said when she was here t'other night," Hagrid said, then frowned. "Sort of."

Then, just as Ron was about to remark on this, Hagrid's bearded face took on a sly look.

"Now, if ye ask me, there's a little girls whose day'd be made brighter by one o' yer signed photos, Harry."

"Do you think so?" Harry asked, frowning thoughtfully. "When did you say Ginny's birthday was, Ron?"

"Uh, Harry?" Hermione began hesitantly.

"Yeah, I guess it doesn't necessarily _have_ to be for her birthday," Harry conceded.

Hermione leaned over to murmur to Ron, who was looking as though he could very easily dive for the bucket again at any moment,

"Was he like this last year?"

* * *

"Ah, Potter, Weasley, there you are," Professor McGonagall's voice rang through the air as though she had been camped there the entire morning, waiting for the first strike of a foot against the floor of the Entrance Hall.

At this point, she happened to glance up at the narration.

"Which I haven't, of course," she added, eyes shifting slightly nervously. "And I certainly haven't been roasting marshmallows and crocheting doilies to pass the time."

Ron and Harry exchanged uneasy looks as Professor McGonagall edged her way over to the campfire mysteriously placed in front of the room, with a pot of marshmallows, a long skewer, and a pile of doilies next to it, and made a quick, surreptitious motion with her wand.

"I could've gone for some of those marshmallows," Harry muttered to Ron as the campfire and doilies vanished. His stomach rumbled in agreement.

"Oh, enough!" Professor McGonagall exclaimed impatiently. "I was here for a reason. I think. And it wasn't entirely to roast marshmallows and finish these doilies. Em. Now why _was_ I here?"

"Were you going to tell Harry and Ron about their detentions?" Hermione asked with just a wee bit of sadistic glee.

"Ah, yes, that was it," Professor McGonagall proclaimed. "Thank-you, Miss Granger. Constant help, you are."

"Er. You're welcome," Hermione said, blushing proudly at these words and guiltily as Ron and Harry shot her simultaneous glares.

"Weasley, you will be polishing trophy cases, mopping floors, washing walls, gardening, doing a bit of laundry—"

"You're sending him to the Dursleys for detention?!" Harry exclaimed, horrified.

"No! With Mr. Filch!" Professor McGonagall replied, annoyed.

"Can't I go to the Dursleys' instead?" Ron pleaded.

"No! And Potter, you will be helping Professor Lockhart answer his fan mail. He said there would be plenty to keep you busy for an evening, but personally, I have my doubts," McGonagall confided.

"Oh, no! Can't I go help Filch instead?"

"Absolutely not, Potter."

"Well then, can't I take on a pack of rabid Pippi Longstockings with both hands behind my back?"

"No!"

"Don't be so ungrateful, Harry," Hermione chimed in before sighing wistfully. "It sounds like a lovely evening…"

"Rrr…" Ron added as Professor McGonagall suppressed a roll of her eyes.

"Eight o'clock, both of you. And Miss Granger, don't _you_ mysteriously show up with Mr. Potter."

"Oh, alright," Hermione sighed sadly.

"Rrr…"

* * *

Harry slogged miserably down the corridor at five minutes to eight, toward Professor Lockhart's office.

"Oh, woe is me…I hate this…I hate detention…I hate people who like detention…I hate people who cause me to be in detention…I hate people who _like_ causing me to be in detention…"

"I hate you, too, Potter," Professor Snape informed him coldly as he happened past.

Harry scratched his head.

"Er…that was odd."

"And by the way," Snape continued in a growl, "your father was a big meanie!"

With that, he ran away, weeping loudly.

"But nothing compared to the oddness of _that_," Harry continued, shrugging helplessly.

"The oddness of what, Potter?" a cheery, beaming voice with all the intelligence of a rutabaga inquired from behind him as he watched billowing black robes disappear quickly down the corridor.

"Oh, never mind," Harry sighed. "Let's just get this over with."

"Anxious, are you?" Lockhart laughed fondly, ruffling the boy's hair. "I must confess, I would be, too."

"I hate everything," Harry groaned as Professor Lockhart led him into the office and bade him be seated before a massive stack of envelopes.

"Why don't you get started addressing those envelopes?" Professor Lockhart suggested, winking. "One of my favourite parts, personaly, second only to reading the adoring words of my many fans."

"Er, Professor Lockhart?" he ventured timidly, glancing about at the dozens of portraits of Lockhart in his various favourite outfits that decorated the room.

The blond man looked up. 

"Hmm?"

"Why do you have all these pictures of yourself?"

"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry," Lockhart laughed. "Have you ever heard the axiom that one must love oneself before one can love another?"

"I'm guessing you're very, very ready to love another, sir," Harry muttered, deeply regretting having asked.

"I hate to brag," Lockhart grinned. "But I do excel in matters of self-confidence as much as I do in everything else."

"Ugh," Harry groaned.

Really, there was little more to say…

* * *

It was several hours later, the candles burning low, the moon high in the sky, the various Lockharts in the portraits on the walls starting to nod off, Harry himself starting to nod off, when it happened.

He had just scribbled out little Danielle Patterson's address onto an envelope, when he heard it: a soft but terrifying voice, its sibilant, blood-curdling tones cutting through the silence of the room like a goose through a sausage-grinder.

_Hit me, baby, one more time…_

Harry looked up immediately, frowning.

"Er, Professor?"

Lockhart beamed up at him.

"Yes, Potter, what is it?"

"Did you just turn into a woman and ask me to hit you, baby, one more time?"

Lockhart thought long and hard about this, one finger to his chin.

"No, not that I recall."

"Strange," Harry commented, shaking his head. Then he looked up hopefully. "So, can I go yet?"

Lockhart peered at the clock, and then gave an exclamation of surprise.

"Has it been four hours already?!"

"I know; it doesn't seem like it," Harry said, carefully refraining from voicing his private opinion that it seemed more like it had been forty than four.

The blond man shook his head sorrowfully.

"That means we only have three more hours to go!"

Harry whimpered painfully.

Lockhart regarded him sympathetically.

"Yes, I know, Harry; we _have_ had fun, haven't we?"

"Brilliant fun," Harry replied flatly in a tone that no one on earth could have possibly mistaken for genuine.

Well, almost no one.

"And I'm afraid I won't be able to give you a treat like this your next detention, either," the man continued sadly. Then he seemed to perk up. "Well, enjoy it while you can, Harry. Enjoy it while you can."

"Y-yeah; enjoy it. Right. I'll do that," he assured Lockhart. Then, under his breath, "Someone kill me."

* * *

"So, what do you think it means?" Ron asked wonderingly.

"I don't know," Harry whispered back, trying to ignore the scent of various household cleaners hanging thickly about the redheaded boy. "Lockhart says he didn't hear it."

"He could've been lying."

"But why would he lie about not hearing a voice singing bits of annoying songs about playing Black Jack?"

Ron blinked.

"That's a good point."

"Y-you don't think this is something to do with…You-Know-Who, do you?"

"Oh, likely," Ron snorted. "You're bloody Harry Potter! Nothing happens to you without You-Know-Who being at the bottom of it! You could get a _cold_, during _cold season_, like everyone _else_ in the castle, and they'd probably say it was a curse by You-Know-Who."

Now it was Harry's turn to blink.

"You'd think You-Know-Who would have better things to do with his time…"

* * *

End Notes: Okay; I've been looking back over the past five chapters, and I really have to shake my head in dismay at the characterizations I'm working with. I've turned Harry into Lockhart the Pocket Edition, Ron into Hermione's possessive guy-who-appreciates-her-many-charms, Hermione into the no-common-sense type of model student, Colin Creevy into a mini-pervert, Oliver Wood into a violent psycho, Snape into goodness-knows-what, and the Voice From the Chamber into a pop star! I really need to stop writing late at night before Draco decides to take up belly dance next chapter. Hmm… :o)

On the bright side, I've kept Lockhart completely in character, if only because it isn't possible to make him any more absurd than he is already. It's the same problem I had with the Dursleys. :o)


End file.
